Abstract/Description

Since the 1990’s many Latin American countries have been implementing administrative, financial and political decentralization policies to transfer certain responsibilities and authority from national to state and municipal governments. This process has often included some aspect of natural resource governance. In Honduras, since 1992 municipal governments have been responsible for the management of an estimated 28% of the nation’s forests located on municipal ejidos. In the study “Forestry decentralization in Latin America: looking to the future”, CIFOR analyses the decentralization of forest resource governance and, in particular, its effects of forest-dependent groups, in Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. This book focuses on the results of the Honduran case study, where a new Forestry Law is being discussed that may bring a series of urgently needed changes in the administration of forests, a sector that is currently dominated by corruption and illegality. In addition, to date forest-dependent groups have been largely marginalized with very limited rights to forest resources. Building on previous research and publications on this issue, as well as new consultations with individual and institutional actors in Honduras, this book has three objectives: (1) to analyse trends, opportunities, problems and challenges related to forestry decentralization, (2) to identify the problems and needs of vulnerable groups within the forest sector, as well as the risks and benefits of decentralization for those groups, and (3) to propose a research and action agenda on forest decentralization in Honduras.